April 26, 2005

No compromise

So Trent Lott and Ben Nelson are pushing a compromise that would bring four of the blocked nominees to the floor, kill three of them, and end the Republican effort to kill the filibuster. But according to the new WaPo/ABC News poll, only 26% support "changing the Senate's rules to make it easier for Republicans to confirm Bush's nominees", while 66% oppose it. That's quite a majority firmly in opposition, and it includes almost half the Republicans surveyed. More interesting, from the perspective of who'd win a media war over the issue, is this question: "The Senate has confirmed 35 federal appeals court judges nominated by Bush, while Senate Democrats have blocked 10 others. Do you think the Senate Democrats are right or wrong to block those nominations?" 48% think the Democrats are right, 36% think them wrong. And that's a much softer numerical comparison than the one Reid uses (I think he's got a 195-10 number, or something similar).

So why compromise? Numbers like this ensure that Frist simply won't have the votes.

But I'd add a few things. The first is that the fact that anyone in the GOP, much less Trent Lott (a proponet of the "nuclear option" who apparently invented the term), is willing to compromise is a sign of their weakness.

The second is that while it's great for political use, the WaPo poll seems suspicious to me, if for no other reason than because so much in this depends on how the question is asked. Republicans, after all having been throwing around this talking point for a while now:

Eighty-two percent of voters agree that "if a nominee for any federal judgeship is well-qualified, he or she deserves an up or down vote on the floor of the Senate.

That number clearly was based on the presupposition that everyone agrees what "well-qualified" means; it might also mean that people are a little confused about what a filibuster is. But given that the question in the current poll is worded like this:

Would you support or oppose changing Senate rules to make it easier for the [r]epublicans to confirm Bush's judicial nominees?

I'm a little suspicious that people understand the question they were answering. In fact, I've suggested before emphasizing the "rule change" aspect of what republicans are trying to do.

It seems to me that a better number, actually, is this one:

Overall, do you think the federal judges in this country are (too liberal), (too conservative) or about right?

Too liberal: 26

Too Conservative: 18

About right: 52

No opinion: 4

This is excellent news. To me it indicates that, despite the GOP's intense, vitriolic, longstanding and widespread flogging of the issue, there isn't much support to radically change the federal judiary. It also shows that the Dems don't really have to do a lot of justifying themselves as long as they can show that it's the other side who have the really radical agenda in this case. Something like this: hey, it's the republicans who really want to change things; we're just trying to make sure that judges follow the law.

Finally and relatedly, I'd like to put in another plug for the way that I really think this debate should be handled: on the merits of the nominees. We should make Janice Rogers Brown a poster girl for conservative activism and Bill Pryor a nutcase who wants who doesn't care about Violence Against Women.

Comments

I'll repeat myself from an earlier thread. People don't know that Orrin Hatch got to vet Clinton's nominees. They need to be reminded of that over and over again. The Democrats' message has to be "there are hundreds of Republican judges that we can support because they are not extremists. Here's the list. Choose from the list and the problem goes away." It puts the ball back in the Republicans' court and makes it look like they are the obstructionists (which of course they are).

I would be pissed if Reid and the Democrats actually compromised with the Repukes on this issue. But I love it that they're publicly talking about compromising on this issue, because it defuses the Repukes' attack ads if they have to pull the trigger on the "nuclear winter option" if the Goopers yank the filibuster.

A group of ministers representing about 17 Baptist churches in the Louisville area and a national Baptist committee that supports separation of church and state yesterday called on a Louisville church to cancel its planned "Justice Sunday" tomorrow.

"We see 'Justice Sunday' as part of a larger effort to link church and state in ways not seen in America since the Puritans were hanging Quakers on Boston Commons and exiling Baptists to Rhode Island," the Rev. Joe Phelps, pastor of Highland Baptist Church, said during a news conference yesterday...

Phelps, describing Highview Baptist as a "sister church," read a statement that said the ministers "stand together with Highview Baptist Church and Christian churches in holding up Jesus Christ as the way, the truth and the life. … But as people who take Scripture seriously, we believe truth must be spoken, and spoken in love. We do not believe Sunday's rally meets either test."

He went on to say, "Churches are for the worship of God and the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Convention halls are for political rallies and party wrangling. To confuse the two is to violate the First Amendment that 18th-century Baptists fought to include in our nation's Constitution."

Phelps said there's no support for the premise that judicial nominees are being "persecuted" for their Christian faith, and that the ministers want the public to know the event does not represent "all Baptists in this city, or people of faith everywhere."

The rapidly reviving religious left is responding to Just Us Sunday in a number of ways:

The New York Times reported today that the National Council of Churches (an ecumenical group representing mainline Protestant and Orthodox denominations, including Senator Frist's own Presbyterian Church USA) and the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism are criticizing Frist's involvement in Just Us Sunday.

The leader of the United Church of Christ had already criticized Frist's involvement, saying that his participation "represents one more highly public and dangerous effort to divide this country by falsely accusing his opponents on the issue of Senate rules and judicial opponents of not being faithful."

The president of the Unitarian Universalist Association released a statement today that said in part: “The Constitution wisely ensures that there are no religious tests for political offices. While private groups, including churches, have a guaranteed right to speak out on social issues, our democracy’s highest elected leaders must hold themselves accountable to all of ‘we, the people.’ I believe that Senator Frist has a moral responsibility to declare unequivocally that the political views of the American people do not define the depth or quality of their faith. Our nation was founded on this inspired principle, and we imperil the precious freedoms of all our citizens when we cease to honor and protect the separation of church and state.”